1841.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



217 



being unknown to the inhabifcmis, the Phenician merchants bought it 

 for trifles given for it in exchange, and by transporting it into Greece, 

 Asia and all other countries, greatly enriched thfuiselves ; and snch 

 was their covetousness, that vvhen'they had fully laden their ships, 

 and had much more silver to bring aboard, they cut off the lead from 

 their anchors, and made use of silver instead of the other. The Phe- 

 nicians for a long time using this trade, and so growing more and more 

 ■jvealthy, sent many colonies into Sicily and the neighbouring islands, 

 and at length into Africa and Sardinia; but a long time after the 

 Iberians coming to understand the nature of the metal, sank many 

 large mines, whence they dug an infinite quantity of pure silver, (as 

 never was the like almost in any other place of the world), whereby 

 they gained exceeding great wealth and revenues. The maimer of 

 working in these mines, and ordering^ the metal among the Iberian^ 

 is thus; there being extraordinary ricli mines in this country of gold, 

 as well as of silver and brass, the labourers in the brass take a fourth 

 part of the pure brass dug up, to their own use, and the common 

 labourers in silver have aEuboick talent for their labour in three days 

 time: for the whole soil is full of solid and shining ore, so that both 

 the nature of the ground, and the industry of the workmen is admirable. 

 At the iirst every common person might dig for this metal, and in re- 

 gard that the silver ore was easily got, ordinary men grew very 

 rich ; but after Iberia came into the hands of the Romans, the 

 mines were managed by a throng of Italians, wdiose covetousuess loaded 

 them with abundance' of riches, for they bought a great number of 

 slaves, and delivered them to the task masters and overseers of the 

 mines. These slaves open the mouths of the mine in many places, 

 where digging deep into the ground, are found massy clods of earth, 

 full of gold and silver; and in sinking both in length and depth, they 

 carry on their works in undermining the earth many furlongs distance, 

 the workmen everv w'ay here and there making galleries under ground, 

 and bringing up all the massy pieces of ore, (wlience the profit and 

 gain is to he had), even out of the lowest bowels of the earth. There 

 is a great difference between these mines and tlmse in Attica ; for 

 besides the laljour, they that search there are at great cost and charge ; 

 and besides are ol^ten frustrated of their hopes, and sometimes lose 

 what they had found, so that theyssem to be unfortunate to a proverb. 

 But those in Iberia who deal in mines, according to their expectations, 

 are greatly enriched by their labours ; for they succeed at the very 

 first sinking, and afterwards by reason of the extraordinary richness of 

 he soil, they find more and more resplendent veins of ore, full of gold 

 and silver; for the whole soil round about is interlaced on every 

 hand with these metals. Sometimes at a great depth they meet with 

 rivers under ground, but by art give a check to the violence of their 

 current; for by cutting of trenches under ground, they divert the 

 stream ; and being sure to gain what they aim at, when they have be- 

 gun, they never leave till they have finished it ; and to admiration they 

 pump out those floods of water with those instruments called Egyptian 

 pumps, invented by Archimedes the Syracusan, when he was in Egypt. 

 By these with constant pumping by turns they throw up the water to 

 the mouth of the pit, and by this means drain the mine dry, and make 

 the place fit for their work. For this engine is so ingeniously con- 

 trived, that a vast quantity of water is strangely with little labour cast 

 out, and the whole flux is thrown up from the very bottom to the sur- 

 face of tlie eartli. The ingenuily of the artist is justly to be admired, 

 not only in ihese pumps, but in many other far greater things, for 

 which he is famous all the world over, of which we shall distinctly 

 give an exact enumeration, when we come to the time wherein he 

 lived. Now though these slaves that continue as so many prisoners 

 in these mines, incredibly enrich their masters by their labour, yet 

 toiling night and day in these golden prisons, many of them by being 

 over wrought, die under ground ; for they have no rest or intermission 

 from their labours ; but the taskmasters by stripes force them to in- 

 tolerable hardships, so that at length they die most miserably. Some 

 that through the strength of their bodies, and vigour of their spirits 

 are able to endure it, continue a long time in those miseiies, whose 

 calamities are such, that death to them is far more eligible than life. 

 Since these mines aftbrded such wonderful riches, it may be greatly 

 admired that none appear to have been sunk of later times ; but in 

 answer thereunto the covetousness of the Carthaginians, when they 

 were masters of Spain, opened all. 



In many places of Spain there is also found tin ; but not upon the 

 surface of the ground as some historiaus report, but they dig it up, and 

 melt it down as they do gold and silver. Above Lusitania there is 

 much of this tin metal that is in the islands lying in the ocean over 

 against Iberia, which are therefore called Cassiterides; and much of 

 it is likewise franported out of Britain into Gaul, the opposite con- 

 tinent. 



( To be conlirtjied.) 



HISTORICAL SKETCH ON THE USE OF BRONZE IN 

 WORKS OF ART. 



By Cesar Daly, Architect. 



(Tramlakd for the Civil Engineer and Archileci's Journal from the 

 Revue Generate de I'Archilecliire.) 



Some years ago, many, otherwise remarkable for their learning, 

 would ask in wdiat. degree modern civilization differed from that of 

 ancient Greece or Rome r and even in the present day there are some 

 who will ask the same question, even in England, in the heart of 

 London, or of Manchester, or of Piirmingham, with a thick cloud of 

 coal smoke from a hundred factories rolling in volumes over their 

 heads. To these a feature so extraordinary, unknown to the ancients, 

 tells no tale, though it is one which marks most strongly the character 

 of modern times, superior in its power over physical nature, and the 

 great development it has given to the eftbrts of mechanical invention. 

 So generally, indeed, is the industrial character of modern times un- 

 noticed, that we have scarcely any accounts of the various branches 

 of manufactures, or of the subject generally, ahhough this practical 

 history is one which has the greatest interest in relation to the human 

 race. ' This history in all its ramifications, whether as to the tools 

 employed or the materials upon which they are exercised, would open 

 a wide field of research, capable of ample gratification, notwithstand- 

 ing the manner in which the records are dispersed. Among the 

 metals and their alloys known at an early 'period, none has been de- 

 voted to such important uses as bronze, to which we shall devote the 

 present essay. 



Had the art of metallurgy been better known in distant periods, and 

 the use of iron and steel more prevalent at a former epoch, or even 

 had copper been more extensively used, we should have remained 

 ignorant of much of the material history of antiquity, for both of the 

 former metals disappear under the influence of rust, and copper is 

 also a sufferer from the action of damp. Thus, while in the Portici 

 Museum the bronze articles are well preserved, those of copper have 

 been more or less affected, and those of iron are scarcely recognizable. 



Copper was known in the earliest times, and is mentioned by Moses; 

 but the difficulty of working it with the hammer, and the higii degree 

 of heal requisite to melt it, greatly limited its use. It was fortunately 

 not long before the properties of a mixture of copper and liu were 

 discovered, a mixture with greater tenacity and risistance tliun cop- 

 per alone, fusible at a lower temperature, and denser than the mean 

 of its components. By this mixture was obtained a metal which 

 readily flowed into every part of the mould, so as to take a correct 

 impress of the pattern, while it was hard enough to wear \yell, was 

 not britt'e, and so far from being injured by oxidation, which only 

 affected it slightly, it was preserved by it from the action of the at- 

 mosphere, taking the beautiful colour which is so much admired. 

 The proviileutial discovery of these properties doubtless gave a great 

 impulse to the infant civilization of the early stages of society, afford- 

 ing at the same time a greater facility fur manufacture united with 

 greater durability. Thus it came to be employed for arms and edge 

 tools by all the nations of antiquity, whether Indians, Chinese, Egyp- 

 tians and Hebrews, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans or Celts. In con- 

 nexion with them, indeed, it might be well said that for many long 

 ages bronze was the iron of the ancients. The fine arts were not long 

 in making use of it, and we finil it ministering to the decoration^ of 

 many of the most ancient monuments of Egypt. In Scripture we find 

 that the Philistines, after the capture of Sampson, loaded him with 

 chains of brass, and Josephus relate.s that Solomon employed Hiram of 

 Tyre to make two columns of bronze richly decorated, eighteen cubits 

 high, twelve cubits in circumference, and four inches in thickness, or 

 four times as thick as that on the Column of July. The columns were 

 placed at the entrance of the porch of the Temple at Jerusalem. 

 From these works we may judge that working in copper and brass 

 was already of old date at this distant period. 



We are quite in the dark as to the processes of melting and form* 

 of the furnaces used by the ancients ; liut we can readily judge, from 

 the interest, in these days of the progress of science, still attached to 

 the casting of bronze on a large scale, of the difficulties to wliich 

 workmen must have been subjected in the rude state of chemistry and 

 metallurgy. In Greece the use of bronze was very common ; the 

 CbalcicBcos, at Lacedemon, was a temple of bronze, dedicated to Mi« 

 nerva, and executed about 750 years before the Christian era by the 

 celebrated Gitiadas, poet, sculptor, and architect. Every part of this 

 building, from the top to the bases of the columns, was entirely 

 covered with plates of bronze decorated with mythological sculptures. 

 Pausanias (B. 10, ch. 5,) relates that when the temple of Apollo at 

 Delphi was rebuilt for the third time, it was constructed of copper, 

 which is not surprising, adds he, as Acrisius had a bronze room made 



